A 19-year-old Japanese woman who turned up yesterday after vanishing nine years ago says she had been held prisoner in a house since then, police said.

She claimed she was abducted by a man who barred her from leaving the second floor of the house in Kashiwazki, 30 miles from the city of Sanjo, from which she disappeared in November 1990.

Japanese police stumbled upon the woman yesterday at a hospital in Kashiwazki, 160 miles northwest of Tokyo, when they went to investigate a report that a man was causing a disturbance there. Police believe the man is the alleged abductor.

The woman told them she was kidnapped on her way home from school in 1990, when she was 10.

“For nine years, I had not taken a step out” of the house, said the woman, whose identity was withheld. “Today I went out for the first time.”

The woman, who was hospitalized for exhaustion, was later reunited with her mother, now 45. The mom called the daughter’s name, and they embraced.